Those of you have been following my writing for years know that I am very cautious about questioning another person's integrity. (If you're not familiar with, do a search on Jeff Lowder, William Lane Craig, and dishonesty or lying.) But this time I have stumbled across something so egregious I am having a very hard time coming up with a charitable explanation. In their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Christian apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek write the following about t … [Read more...]

I met a fellow skeptic at a Starbucks a month or two ago. We recently bumped into each other, had a brief chat, and I found out that he was also interested in questions about the historical Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and the historicity of Jesus. He was especially interested in my thoughts about the resurrection, so I did a quick brain dump of some of my skeptical thoughts about the resurrection.Here is what I jotted down as a quick summary of some of my thinking on this … [Read more...]

Reader GGDFan77 asked me for my thoughts on the exchange between Dr. Richard Carrier, who I respect and consider a friend, and Dr. Luke Barnes regarding fine-tuning arguments. I initially responded in a series of comments in the combox for my post about Hugh Ross's estimates for the probability of life-permitting prebiotic conditions. But those turned out to be so lengthy that I think the topic deserves its own dedicated post.Here's some brief context for readers not familiar with the … [Read more...]

The key question at issue is whether (S2) is true or false:(S2) But God would neither perpetrate nor permit grand deception regarding the Incarnation and Resurrection.I have raised two objections against one reason that Cavin and Colombetti give for their conclusion that "(S2) is patently false". One reason they gave was a passage from the gospel of Mark which they think shows that the author of Mark, and probably Jesus too, had a concept of God which was such that God could (and would) … [Read more...]

Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have written an article raising some significant objections to Richard Swinburne's case for the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus: "Swinburne on the Resurrection" (Philosophia Christi, Vol. 15, No. 2; hereafter: SOR). LINKI'm fully on-board with their overall conclusion that "...Swinburne's argument for the Incarnation and Resurrection...is seriously undermined by the failure to satisfy the requirement of total evidence." (SOR, p.37) As with other … [Read more...]

As someone who knows a thing or two about probability, I've always wanted to dive into the technical details for how proponents of cosmic fine-tuning arguments justify the probability estimates associated with such arguments. Along those lines, I just found this page on Hugh Ross's Reasons to Believe website:Probability for Life on Earth (APR 2004)Ross arrives at the conclusion that the probability of life on earth, conditional upon the hypothesis that it arose by chance alone, is 1 in 1 … [Read more...]